19 November 2009
WELCOME TO SEOUL, MR. PRESIDENT:
“I want to emphasize that President Lee and I both agree on the need to break the pattern that existed in the past in which North Korea behaves in a provocative fashion, then is willing to return to talks, and then talks for a while, and then leaves the talks and seeks further concessions.
If we’ve finally learned, I’ll admit that Obama is the last man I’d have expected to finally learn it. Call me cautiously but pleasantly surprised, though I’m still worried about who will take Phillip Goldberg‘s place. I nominate Stuart Levey.
The United States and its ally South Korea are “running amuck with bloodshot eyes to find a pretext for a war of aggression,” North Korea’s official news agency said Tuesday. It warned that the North’s people are prepared to sacrifice their lives to defend “Korean-style socialism “¦ which is (the) most advantageous in the world.”
It’s a relief that we have a president who is, at least sometimes, smart enough not to believe the pablum he fed his supporters during the campaign. Just listen to this gathering of imbeciles applaud the very idea of talking to North Korea, as if they expect it to accomplish something, as if that isn’t exactly what we’d been doing all along. Fine, talk to them, but for the life of me, I can’t see any evidence that talking with North Korea has ever made its behavior less dangerous.
A BRUTALLY HONEST LOOK at how Korea sees race, in Foreign Policy (ht to Robert). The money quote is from Hines Ward’s mother:
Kim described in stark terms the discrimination she experienced before she immigrated to the United States. “What do you think would have become of us if I had kept living here with Hines? He would probably never have been able to be anything but a beggar. Do you think I would even have been able to get work cleaning houses?” she said while visiting the Pearl S. Buck Foundation in Seoul. “Koreans of the same skin color are even more racist among themselves. It doesn’t make sense. If everybody hates our children so much because their skin is a different color, then why do Koreans run around dying their hair blond and red?”
PRESIDENT LEE WILL REPLACE his envoys to China and Russia. Interesting, but I’m still waiting for him to fire his Consul in Shenyang.
AFTER ALL, HITLER DID BUILD THE AUTOBAHNS, and after all, Kim Jong Il does make hippies cut their hair. One terrible prospect that had never occurred to me is that post-Kim Jong Il Korea will be overrun by a blight of smelly hippies.